I would hunt for the beast that wore clothes.
4
Where the Beastie Lives
IT was pleasant walking high across the fells, looking down upon the County. To the west, in the far distance, the sea sparkled in the sunlight. The air was still chilly for the time of year, but the sun had some warmth, and it felt good to be alive.
I found a sheltered hollow about five miles south of Kirkby Lonsdale, trapped a couple of rabbits, and cooked them slowly. The walk had improved my appetite; it was the first food I’d had since breakfast, and I savored every mouthful before settling down for the night. I fell asleep quickly despite the temperature, which dropped quickly once the sun had set.
I awoke suddenly in the middle of the night and sat up, my heart racing. I had a strong feeling that I was being watched, that something was out there in the darkness, gazing at me.
I held my breath and listened carefully. I could hear nothing but the wind sighing through the grass. There was no coldness warning me that something from the dark was out there. It was probably nothing, I told myself—maybe just a fox hoping to scavenge something from the leftovers of my supper.
However, it left me feeling uneasy, and it was a long time before I got to sleep again.
In the morning, clouds had raced in from the west, threatening rain. I nibbled a piece of cheese for my breakfast. My master had taught me to eat sparingly when about to deal with the dark. You needed to maintain your physical strength, but the odd nibble of cheese sufficed for that. Not that my stomach agreed! It was rumbling with hunger, but I couldn’t afford to listen to it. I might soon come face-to-face with the murderous creature.
Three girls had died. The first had been bad enough, but with each successive death my anger and sense of failure had increased. As a spook, I was supposed to protect the County. I was failing badly and was desperate to do something about it.
I headed northeast as fast as I could. I didn’t go into the village of Kirby Lonsdale itself but circled it slowly, looking for tracks. My master had taught me to be patient when tracking and to pay attention to the slightest thing. I spent most of the day searching the main approaches to the village from the northwest and southwest. I was thorough and circled it twice.
Then, late in the afternoon, my perseverance was rewarded. I found tracks beside a path. Something had left the path to approach a nearby stream, and the small prints could be clearly seen in the mud. At first I dismissed them as being of no significance. The size told me that they belonged to a child no older than seven or eight, but there were no adult-sized prints nearby. Then I noticed that the prints were unusual—too long and thin for a human foot. And I saw something else that told me I had found the tracks I’d been looking for.
In places, the small prints had been partly obliterated. It was almost as if some kind of snake had slithered over them. It might well be a tail.
Soon afterward I found fresh tracks. This new set of prints was heading roughly in the direction of Caster. At first I was elated and began to walk faster. But within an hour, my optimism began to fade.
The tracks had disappeared. I’d lost the trail completely.
I have certain gifts, courtesy of being a seventh son of a seventh son. However, I have inherited abilities from my mam, too. She was a good wife and mother, and loved my dad and all her sons, but she was also a lamia—the first that ever existed—and she passed some of her powers on to me.
One was the ability to track someone without physical evidence of their movements. I just knew where the people I sought were to be found. That gift had helped me in the past, but it could not be relied on, and now, no matter how hard I tried, I could sense no trace of the creature I was pursuing.
Disappointed, I turned and headed for home.
I arrived back at Chipenden about an hour before sunset. I was hungry and exhausted. To my annoyance, I found the girl there again; this time she was waiting on the edge of the garden.
“You look exhausted!” she exclaimed. “Have you had a difficult day?”
I walked straight past her, not bothering to reply. I’d almost reached the edge of the trees when she shouted something at my back.
“I know what’s been killing those girls! I know where the beastie lives!”
“How do you know about the dead girls? You’re lying!” I shouted angrily, turning back to confront her.
She stared into my eyes. “I don’t tell lies—and certainly not about spook’s business, where innocent victims are involved.
“Everybody knows,” she continued. “They’re talking about it in every village for miles. They’re scared for their families. Some think that John Gregory would have sorted the problem out by now.”
Her words were like a slap in the face. I felt hurt and angry, but I took a deep breath and controlled my feelings. I knew that she was telling the truth, and I had to face it.
It made me realize how isolated I was. That was the problem with being a spook—you never heard the local gossip or knew what people were thinking. It was even worse now that I was working alone. I had nobody with whom to share the burden and talk through concerns and problems.
“So you know what’s been doing the killing? Enlighten me!” I replied sarcastically.
“I don’t know exactly what it is, but it’s hairy and lives inside a tree. At night it wanders about and finds its way into people’s houses. It can change its size. I know that in one of those houses, a girl died. I heard about the other deaths—I’m thinking they might be the same.”
“So you’ve been spying on this hairy beastie as well as me. But we have a problem here. How come when you followed the supposed creature, it didn’t see you?”
“For the same reason you weren’t aware of me when I followed you. I was there close by, but you didn’t see me.”
“You can make yourself invisible?” I said skeptically. Then I scowled. “What are you, a witch? Perhaps you belong in a pit,” I suggested. In truth, I knew she wasn’t a witch. I was just trying to scare her, really—though I knew it was beneath me. I regretted the words the moment they had left my mouth.
“No. I’m a seventh daughter of a seventh daughter,” she replied, “just as I told you. It’s one of the gifts I was born with. I can’t make myself truly invisible—I can’t just disappear before your very eyes. But if you didn’t know where to look and I stood very still, you wouldn’t be able to see me.”
When the girl had confronted me previously, I’d dismissed the idea of a seventh daughter of a seventh daughter. It was something I’d not considered before. The Spook had never referred to such a thing—there was certainly no record of one in his Bestiary—nor, for that matter, in any of the books I’d read before his library burned down.
“I’ve never heard of such a thing!” I exclaimed.
“So what?” the girl cried angrily. “Just because you’ve never heard of it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Why shouldn’t it apply to girls as well? Why can’t a seventh daughter of a seventh daughter be born with powers to fight the dark?”
She seemed very determined and confident, and it suddenly struck me that my mind had been closed to the possibility. Traditionally, spooks had always been male. This was no doubt because it was men who usually held positions of power and decided how things should be done.
I took a deep breath and bit back my annoyance. If this girl knew the location of the beast, I had to use her knowledge. Other lives could be at stake. The beast would kill again if I didn’t deal with it first.
“Could you show me the tree where this creature lives?” I forced myself to ask the question in a civil tone of voice.
“If I do that, will you take me on as your apprentice?” she asked immediately.
I certainly had no intention of doing any such thing, but if she really did have information on the mysterious deaths, it was my duty to take advantage of it.
“I’m making no promises,” I told her, “but I’ll think about it. We can’t let this g
o on. Do you want another death on your conscience when you could have prevented it?”
For the first time her confidence seemed to falter, and she lowered her gaze. “The tree is to the east. I’ll take you there now, if you like. It’s less than an hour’s walk. We could get there before dark if we move quickly.”
I nodded. “I have to collect a few things. Wait here. I’ll be back in ten minutes.”
I went back to the house and collected my silver chain. I also filled my left pocket with salt and my right with iron. Then I took a small portion of cheese for the journey.
When I returned to the crossroads, to my fury, the girl was no longer there. I paced up and down for a while, but there was no sign of her. After five minutes I lost patience. Had she been telling me lies, playing some sort of joke? I wondered.
I glanced around, gave a snort of disgust, annoyed with myself for trusting her, and prepared to leave. I would go back to the house, grab some sleep, and search for the creature in the morning. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a movement. I looked around, and suddenly the girl was there. She seemed to step right out of a tree trunk. So the ability to be “invisible” was one thing she hadn’t been lying about. . . .
No doubt she hoped I’d comment on her sudden reappearance, but I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction, so I simply gave her a curt nod.
“What do they call you?” I asked.
“My mam calls me Jennifer, but I prefer Jenny.”
I was stunned; my heart pounded. I tried to keep the astonishment from my face as I remembered where I had heard that name before. I must have failed, because she gave me a curious glance.
“What’s wrong?” she asked. “You look like somebody just walked over your grave!”
I ignored her and looked straight ahead. “Lead on!” I said. “But warn me before we come in sight of the tree.”
As we walked, I remembered how a dark mage had once conjured up in my mind a vision of a possible future—one where the house at Chipenden stood abandoned and derelict, with no spook working from it. I’d walked up to my bedroom, and there on the wall, where all the apprentices, including me, had scrawled their names, was a new addition:
JENNY.
It suggested that a girl apprentice had once been based there. It seemed very odd—as far as I knew, there had never been any female spook’s apprentices. Since then I’d thrust the image from my mind, assuming that it was just one of the mage’s tricks. But now a girl of the same name was asking to become my apprentice.
Was this simply coincidence?
Jenny had used that old County saying, too—I looked as if someone had walked over my grave. It seemed sinister in view of what I knew. I would never have abandoned the Chipenden house like that . . . not unless I was dead.
The future is never totally fixed. It changes with every decision we make. I’d no intention of doing so, but if I were to take on this girl as my apprentice, would it hasten my death and result in the house being abandoned?
Realizing that we were approaching a wood, I brought my mind back to the present.
“That’s where the beastie lives,” Jenny whispered, indicating the largest tree ahead of us. It was an oak of tremendous girth that must have been at least five hundred years old.
The sun had gone down, and the light was beginning to fail. I experienced no sudden chill that warned me that something from the dark was close, but once again that feeling of being watched came over me—just as it had when I’d awakened suddenly in the night, south of Kirkby Lonsdale.
Could the creature be watching me from its lair? I wondered.
I was dealing with an unknown entity, and anything was possible. I needed to be on my guard. Instinct made me take hold of my chain, but would that even help me here?
According to the girl, this was about the time when the creature usually left its tree. I just hoped we weren’t too late and it hadn’t gone already. I wanted to see it for myself.
I gestured to Jenny, indicating that we should crouch, and we both sank down onto our knees, peering through a thicket of young ash trees. For at least five minutes, nothing happened. Somewhere in the distance an owl hooted, and I tensed every time some nocturnal creature stirred or rustled.
Then, suddenly, there was silence—that absolute quiet that falls when some dangerous predator approaches. Soon afterward I heard a peculiar noise. It was a sort of slithering sound, as if a snake was coiling itself about a branch. Then there was a harsh rasp, and something was falling fast from one of the topmost branches.
It was almost dark and it was hard to make it out, but then I saw it silhouetted against the sky. The creature reminded me of a very large squirrel with a long tail.
It dropped a long way to the ground, but hardly made a sound when it landed. Then it scampered off, heading north—toward the village.
What now? Should I follow it? By doing so, I might just save someone’s life. But it had moved very fast, and I suspected that it would be hard to track.
“Wait here!” I hissed at Jenny. “If I’m not back within the hour, go home!”
Then, without waiting for a reply, I set off after the creature. It was risky. I might lose its trail; even worse, it might sense that it was being followed, and I’d lose the element of surprise. But I had no choice. My duty was to the people of the County, and I wanted to prevent it from killing again. Within ten minutes, as I feared, I’d lost its trail altogether. I spent another half hour trying in vain to pick it up again. Once more I drew on Mam’s gift to locate the creature, but once more it failed to work.
So, angry and frustrated, I returned to where Jenny was still waiting, and I quickly decided on my next move.
5
Purrai Have No Rights
“I’M going to climb up into that tree and wait for the creature to come back,” I told Jenny.
“Good idea!” she said enthusiastically. “We’ll take it by surprise.”
“I said I, not we! It’s dangerous. I don’t know what we’re up against here.”
“Does that matter?” Jenny asked. “You’ve already told me that an apprenticeship to a spook is dangerous. I might as well start as I mean to go on and get used to it.”
The girl was very argumentative. I wondered how John Gregory would have dealt with her. But I had to make up my own mind now, and I decided that she could be of more use to me outside the tree.
“Listen,” I told her. “Your job is to keep watch here and warn me when the creature returns. Otherwise it might take me by surprise. Can you imitate the hoot of an owl?”
Jenny smiled and gave me a perfect imitation of a barn owl—it was almost too good. I’d heard an owl just minutes earlier. Could I tell her call from the real thing?
“Can you do the cry of a corpse fowl?” I asked.
“No,” she said, “but I can do a pretty good imitation of a nightjar.”
Her cry split the darkness, raising the hairs on the back of my neck.
It was good, but not quite as perfect as her owl. It was just what we needed.
“You do know that a nightjar is just another name for a corpse fowl?” I said.
“Of course I do! Can’t you tell when someone’s joking?”
I sighed. This was going to be hard work. “When the creature comes back, just give two quick calls, then count to three and give another. Can you manage that?”
“Of course I can, but please be careful! I’ve met a couple of other spooks—one in particular was a pig, and the second had hairy ears and a foul temper. If anything were to happen to you, who would train me? They certainly wouldn’t!”
I wondered how Jenny knew these other spooks. Had she been spying on them too? But this was no time to start questioning her further.
“Yes, I’ll take care. You do the same. Stay in hiding and don’t get any closer to the oak than this. Understand? Look after this for me.” I handed her my staff.
She nodded, inspected it, and gave me a grin in return.
&n
bsp; I turned and very cautiously began to approach the huge tree.
I made a slow circuit of its trunk, wondering if there might be another way in. It was worth checking, but I knew that I would probably have to climb the tree and search for an entrance higher up. After all, that was where the creature had emerged from earlier.
That’s why I’d left my staff with the girl—it would simply have been an encumbrance. But it left me with fewer weapons at my disposal: my pocketfuls of salt and iron, and my silver chain.
I began to climb.
It took me a long time to locate the entrance to the creature’s lair. I circled the tree at several different levels until at last I found it.
It was well camouflaged. A human would have made such a door square, oblong, oval, or even round. This bark-covered door was difficult to see because of its irregular shape. Once I’d spotted it, I found I could ease the door open with my fingernails. It swung out easily, on hinges that had recently been oiled.
The next problem was its size. The creature was a lot smaller than me. It would be hard for me to squeeze through that doorway, and I realized that once I was inside it would be difficult to get out again in a hurry. But I’d have to deal with whatever came my way. I wriggled through headfirst, pulling myself through the opening with my hands. I was now pretty much trapped. I had to bind this creature and must not miss with the chain. I felt confident that I could do so—that was one skill I was proud of.
Looking about me, I was surprised by what I found. I had not seen the creature up close in good light, but Jenny had called it a beastie, and from a distance it had resembled a squirrel. I had expected its lair to be that of a wild beast, a predator, the floor perhaps strewn with bones and straw or grass.
So it was a shock to see rows of shelves, a table, chairs, and lambskin rugs dyed a brilliant red. This was an unexpectedly sophisticated dwelling that made me even more confused about what I was dealing with. Many shelves were filled with books, others with glass jars containing what looked like herbs or strange objects floating in a clear liquid or suspended in yellow gel. Each jar was labeled in some foreign language.